So famous a womanizer was the Italian-born
libertine Giacomo Casanova that, a full two centuries after his
death, his name remains synonymous with the art of seduction. But
for the years he spent in the employ of
Count Waldstein of Bohemia as a librarian, Casanova, "the
world's greatest lover" — at one-time the company of European
royalty, popes and cardinals, and man known to the likes of
Voltaire,
Goethe and
Mozart —
would have been consigned to obscurity.

Biography

Youth

Giacomo Girolamo Casanova was born in Venice in 1725 to
actress Zanetta Farussi, wife of actor and dancer Gaetano Giuseppe
Casanova. Giacomo was the first of six children, being followed by
Giovanni Alvise (1730–1795), Faustina Maddalena (1731–1736), Maria
Maddalena Antonia Stella (1732–1800), Gaetano Alvise (1734–1783),
and Francesco (1737–1803). Because of his mother's profession, it
is suspected that some or all of these were fathered by men other
than her husband. Casanova himself suspected his biological father
to have been Michele Grimani, a member of the patrician family that
owned the San Samuele theatre where Zanetta and Gaetano had worked.
Lending support to this, Grimani’s brother Abbé Alvise Grimani,
became Casanova’s guardian. In his memoirs, however, Casanova
provides an elaborate paternal genealogy to explain his birth,
beginning in Spain in 1428.

The Republic
of Venice during Casanova’s time was past its peak as a naval
and commercial power. Instead Venice thrived as
‘the’ pleasure capital of Europe, ruled by political and religious
conservatives who tolerated social vices and encouraged tourism. It
was a required stop on the Grand Tour,
traveled by young men coming of age, especially Englishmen. The
famed Carnival, gambling houses, and beautiful courtesans were
powerful drawing cards. This was the milieu that bred Casanova and
made him its most famous and representative citizen.

Casanova was cared for by his grandmother Marzia
Baldissera while his mother toured about Europe in the theater. His
father died when he was eight. As a child, Casanova suffered
nosebleeds, and his grandmother sought help from a witch: “Leaving
the gondola, we enter a hovel, where we find an old woman sitting
on a pallet, with a black cat in her arms and five or six others
around her.” Though the unguent applied was ineffective, Casanova
was fascinated by the incantation. Perhaps to remedy the nosebleeds
(a physician blamed the density of Venice’s air), Casanova, on his
ninth birthday, was sent to a boarding house on the main land in
Padua. For
Casanova, the neglect by his parents was a bitter memory. “So they
got rid of me,” he proclaimed flatly.

Conditions at the boarding house were appalling
so he appealed to be placed under the care of Abbé Gozzi, his
primary instructor, who tutored him in academic subjects as well as
the violin. Casanova moved in with the priest and his family and
lived there through most of his teenage years. It was also in the
Gozzi household that Casanova first came into contact with the
opposite sex, when Gozzi’s younger sister Bettina fondled him at
the age of eleven. Bettina was “pretty, lighthearted, and a great
reader of romances. … The girl pleased me at once, though I had no
idea why. It was she who little by little kindled in my heart the
first sparks of a feeling which later became my ruling passion.”
Although she subsequently married, Casanova maintained a life-long
attachment to Bettina and the Gozzi family.

Early on, Casanova demonstrated a quick wit, an
intense appetite for knowledge, and a perpetually inquisitive mind.
He entered the University
of Padua at twelve and graduated at seventeen, in 1742, with a
degree in law (“for which I felt an unconquerable aversion”). It
was his guardian’s hope that he would become an ecclesiastical
lawyer. Casanova had also studied moral philosophy, chemistry, and
mathematics, and was keenly interested in medicine. (“I should have
been allowed to do as I wished and become a physician, in which
profession quackery, is even more effective than it is in legal
practice.”) He frequently prescribed his own treatments for himself
and friends. While attending the university, Casanova began to
gamble and quickly got into debt, causing his recall to Venice by
his grandmother, but the gambling habit became firmly
established.

Back in Venice, Casanova started his clerical law
career and was admitted as an abbé after being
conferred minor orders by the Patriarch of Venice. He shuttled back
and forth to Padua to continue his university studies. By now, he
had become something of a dandy—tall and dark, his long hair
powdered, scented, and elaborately curled. He quickly ingratiated
himself with a patron (something he was to do all his life),
76-year-old Venetian senator Alvise Gasparo Malipiero, the owner of
Palazzo
Malipiero, close to Casanova’s home in Venice. Malipiero moved
in the best circles and taught young Casanova a great deal about
good food and wine, and how to behave in society. When Casanova was
caught dallying with Malipero’s intended object of seduction,
actress Teresa Imer, however, the senator drove both of them from
his house. Casanova’s growing curiosity about women led to his
first complete sexual experience, with two sisters Naneeta and
Maria Savorgnan, then fourteen and sixteen, who were distant
relatives of the Grimanis. Casanova proclaimed that his life
avocation was firmly established by this encounter.

Early careers in Italy

Scandals tainted Casanova’s short
church career. After his grandmother’s death, Casanova entered a
seminary for a short while, but soon his indebtedness landed him in
prison for the first time. An attempt by his mother to secure him a
position with bishop Bernardo de Bernardis was rejected by
Casanova. Instead, he found employment as a scribe with the
powerful Cardinal Acquaviva in Rome. On meeting the
Pope, Casanova
boldly asked for a dispensation to read the “forbidden books” and
from eating fish (which he claimed inflamed his eyes). He also
composed love letters for another cardinal. But when Casanova
became the scapegoat for a scandal involving a local pair of
star-crossed lovers, Cardinal Acquaviva dismissed Casanova,
thanking him for his sacrifice, but effectively ending his church
career.

In search of a new profession, Casanova bought a
commission to become a military officer for the Republic
of Venice. His first step was to look the part:

Reflecting that there was now little likelihood
of my achieving fortune in my ecclesiastical career, I decided to
dress as a soldier … I inquire for a good tailor … he brings me
everything I need to impersonate a follower of Mars. … My uniform
was white, with a blue vest, a shoulder knot of silver and gold… I
bought a long sword, and with my handsome cane in hand, a trim hat
with a black cockade, with my hair cut in side whiskers and a long
false pigtail, I set forth to impress the whole city.

He went to Corfu, after which he
was stationed for a short period in Constantinople.
He found his advancement too slow and his duty boring, and he
managed to lose most of his pay playing faro. Casanova soon abandoned his
military career and returned to Venice.

At the age of 21, he set out to become a
professional gambler but losing all his remaining money, he turned
to Grimani for a job. Casanova thus began his third career, as a
violinist in the San Samuele theater, “a menial journeyman of a
sublime art in which, if he who excels is admired, the mediocrity
is rightly despised. … My profession was not a noble one, but I did
not care. Calling everything prejudice, I soon acquired all the
habits of my degraded fellow musicians.” He and some of his
fellows, “often spent our nights roaming through different quarters
of the city, thinking up the most scandalous practical jokes and
putting them into execution … we amused ourselves by untying the
gondolas moored before private homes, which then drifted with the
current”. They also sent midwives and physicians on false
calls.

Unhappy with his lot as a musician, good fortune
came to the rescue when Casanova saved the life of a Venetian
nobleman of the Bragadin family, who had a stroke while riding with
Casanova in a gondola after a wedding ball. They immediately
stopped to have the senator bled. Then, at the senator’s palace, a
physician bled the senator again and applied an ointment of mercury
to the senator’s chest (mercury was an all-purpose but toxic remedy
of the time). A priest was called as death seems to be approaching.
Casanova, however, took charge and taking responsibility for a
change in treatment, under protest from the attending physician,
ordered the removal of the ointment and the senator recovered with
rest and a sensible diet. Because of his youth and his facile
recitation of medical knowledge, the senator and his two bachelor
friends thought Casanova wise behind his years, and concluded that
he must be in possession of occult knowledge. Being cabalists themselves, the
senator invited Casanova into his household and he became a
life-long patron.

Casanova stated in his memoirs:

I took the most creditable, the noblest, and the
only natural course. I decided to put myself in a position where I
need no longer go without the necessities of life: and what those
necessities were for me on one could judge better than me…No one in
Venice could understand how an intimacy could exist between myself
and three men of their character, they all heaven and I all earth;
they most severe in their morals, and I addicted to every kind of
dissolute living.

For the next three years under the senator’s
patronage, working nominally as a legal assistant, Casanova led the
life of a nobleman, dressed magnificently, and as was natural to
him, spending most of his time gambling and engaging in amorous
pursuits. His patron was exceedingly tolerant, but he warned
Casanova that some day he would pay the price; “I made a joke of
his dire Prophecies and went my way.” However, not much later,
Casanova was forced to leave Venice, due to further scandals.
Casanova had dug up a freshly buried corpse in order to play a
practical joke and exact revenge—but the victim went into a
paralysis, never to recover. And in another scandal, a young girl
who had duped him accused him of rape and went to the
officials.

Escaping to Parma, Casanova
entered into a three-month affair with a Frenchwoman he named
“Henriette”, perhaps the deepest love he ever experienced—a woman
who combined beauty, intelligence, and culture. In his words, “They
who believe that a woman is incapable of making a man equally happy
all the twenty-four hours of the day have never known an Henriette.
The joy which flooded my soul was far greater when I conversed with
her during the day than when I held her in my arms at night. Having
read a great deal and having natural taste, Henriette judged
rightly of everything.” She also judged Casanova astutely. As noted
Casanovist J. Rives Childs wrote:

Perhaps no woman so captivated Casanova as
Henriette; few women obtained so deep an understanding of him. She
penetrated his outward shell early in their relationship, resisting
the temptation to unite her destiny with his. She came to discern
his volatile nature, his lack of social background, and the
precariousness of his finances. Before leaving, she slipped into
his pocket five hundred louis, mark of her evaluation of him.

The Grand Tour

Crestfallen and despondent, Casanova
returned to Venice, and after a good gambling streak, he recovered
and set off on a Grand Tour,
reaching Paris in 1750. Along the way, from one town to another, he
got into sexual escapades resembling operatic plots. In Lyon, he
entered the society of Freemasonry,
which appealed to his interest in secret rites and which, for the
most part, attracted men of intellect and influence who proved
useful in his life, providing valuable contacts and uncensored
knowledge. Many famous 18th Century men were Masons including
Mozart and
George
Washington. Casanova was also attracted to Rosicrucianism.

Casanova stayed in Paris for two years, learned
the language, spent much time at the theater, and introduced
himself to notables. Soon, however, his numerous liaisons were
noted by the Paris police, as they were in nearly every city he
visited.

He moved on to Dresden in 1752 and
encountered his mother. He wrote a well-received play La
Moluccheide, now lost. He then visited Prague, and Vienna, where the
tighter moral atmosphere was not to his liking. He finally returned
to Venice in 1753. In Venice, Casanova resumed his wicked
escapades, picking up many enemies, and gaining the greater
attention of the Venetian inquisitors. His police record became a
lengthening list of reported blasphemies, seductions, fights, and
public controversy. A state spy, Giovanni Manucci, was employed to
draw out Casanova’s knowledge of cabalism and Freemasonry, and to
exam his library for forbidden books. Senator Bragadin, in total
seriousness this time (being formerly an inquisitor himself),
advised his “son” to leave immediately or face the stiffest
consequences.

Imprisonment and escape

The following day, at age thirty,
Casanova was arrested: “The Tribunal, having taken cognizance of
the grave faults committed by G. Casanova primarily in public
outrages against the holy religion, their Excellencies have caused
him to be arrested and imprisoned under the Leads.” “The Leads” was
the famous prison attached to the Doge's
palace, across the Bridge of
Sighs, named for the thick lead plates on the roof. Without a
trial, Casanova was sentenced to five years in the “unescapable”
prison.

At first, he was placed in solitary confinement.
Over months, he was given reading matter, better food, and even an
armchair, all provided by his patron. During walks he was granted
in the prison attic, he found pieces of marble and an iron bar
which he secreted back to his cell and hid in his chair. When he
was absent temporary cell-mates, he turned the bar into a spike
through a month of sharpening. Then he began to dig in the floor,
realizing that his cell was just above the Inquisitor’s chamber.
Just three days before his intended escape during a festival (when
no one would be in the chamber below), Casanova was moved to a
“better” cell (with a view), despite his protests that he was
perfectly happy where he was. In his new cell, “I sat in my
armchair like a man in a stupor; motionless as a statue, I saw that
I had wasted all the efforts I had made, and I could not repent of
them. I felt that I had nothing to hope for, and the only relief
left to me was not to think of the future.”

Overcoming his inertia, Casanova set upon another
escape plan. He solicited the help of the prisoner in the adjacent
cell, Father Balbi, a renegade priest. The spike was passed to the
priest in a heaping plate of pasta carried on top of a Bible by the
hoodwinked jailer. The priest made a hole in his ceiling then
climbed across and made a hole in the ceiling of Casanova’s cell.
To neutralize his new cell-mate, who was a spy, Casanova played on
his superstitions and terrorized him into silence. When Balbi broke
through to Casanova’s cell, Casanova lifted himself through the
ceiling. He left behind a note with the motto “I shall not die, but
live, and declare the works of the Lord”.

The spy remained behind, too frightened of the
consequences if he would be caught escaping with the others.
Casanova and Balbi pried their way through the lead plates and onto
the sloping roof of the Doge’s Palace, with a heavy fog swirling.
The drop to the nearby canal being too great, Casanova pried open
the grate over a dormer window, and broke the window to gain entry.
They found a long ladder on the roof, and with the additional use
of ropes, lowered themselves into the room whose floor was
twenty-five feet below. They rested until morning, changed clothes
then broke a small lock on an exit door and passed into palace
corridor, through galleries and chambers, down stairs, and out a
final door. It was six in the morning and they escaped by gondola.
Eventually, Casanova reached Paris, where he arrived on the same
day (January 5, 1757) that Robert-François
Damiens made an attempt on the life of Louis XV.

Skeptics contend that Casanova’s tale of escape
is implausible, and that he simply bribed his way to freedom with
the help of his patron. However, some physical evidence does exist
in the state records, including repairs to the cell ceilings.
Thirty years later in 1787, Casanova wrote Story of My Flight,
which was very popular and was reprinted in many languages, and he
repeated the tale a little later in his memoirs.

Return to Paris

He knew his stay in Paris might be a long
one and he proceeded accordingly: “I saw that to accomplish
anything I must bring all my physical and moral faculties in play,
make the acquaintance of the great and the powerful, exercise
strict self-control, and play the chameleon.” Casanova had matured,
and this time in Paris, though still depending at times on quick
thinking and decisive action, he was more calculating and
deliberate. His first task was to find a new patron. He reconnected
with old friend de Bernis, now the Foreign Minister of France.
Casanova was advised by his patron to find a means of raising funds
for the state as a way to gain instant favor. Casanova promptly
became one of the trustees of the first state
lottery, and one of its best ticket salesmen. The enterprise
earned him a large fortune quickly. With money in hand, he traveled
in high circles and undertook new seductions. He duped many
socialites with his occultism, particularly the Marquess Jeanne
d'Urfé, using his excellent memory which made him appear to have a
sorcerer’s power of numerology. In Casanova’s
view, “deceiving a fool is an exploit worthy of an intelligent
man”.

Casanova claimed to be a Rosicrucian and
an alchemist,
aptitudes which made him popular with some of the most prominent
figures of the era, among them Madame
de Pompadour, Count de Saint-Germain, d'Alembert
and Jean-Jacques
Rousseau. So popular was alchemy among the nobles, particularly
the search for the “philosopher’s stone”, that Casanova was highly
sought after for his supposed knowledge, and he profited
handsomely. He met his match, however, in the Count de
Saint-Germain: “This very singular man, born to be the most
barefaced of all imposters, declared with impunity, with a casual
air, that he was three hundred years old, that he possessed the
universal medicine, that he made anything he liked from nature,
that he created diamonds.”

De Bernis decided to send Casanova to Dunkirk on
his first spying mission. Casanova was paid well for his quick work
and this experience prompted one of his few remarks against the
ancien régime and the class he was dependent on. He remarked in
hindsight, “All the French ministers are the same. They lavished
money which came out of the other people’s pockets to enrich their
creatures, and they were absolute: The down-trodden people counted
for nothing, and, through this, the indebtedness of the State and
the confusion of finances were the inevitable results. A Revolution
was necessary.”

As the Seven Years
War began, Casanova was again called to help increase the state
treasury. He was entrusted with a mission of selling state bonds in
Amsterdam,
Holland being the financial center of Europe at the time. He
succeeded to sell the bonds at only an 8% discount, and the
following year was rich enough to found a silk manufactory with his
earnings. The French government even offered him a title and a
pension if he would become a French citizen and work on behalf of
the Finance Ministry, but he declined, perhaps because it would
impede his wanderlust. Casanova had reached his peak of fortune but
could not sustain it. He ran the business poorly, borrowed heavily
trying to save it, and spent much of his wealth on constant
liaisons with his female workers who were his “harem”.

For his debts, Casanova was imprisoned again,
this time at Fort-l'Éveque,
but was liberated four days afterwards, upon the insistence of the
Marquess d'Urfé. Unfortunately, though he was released, his patron
de Bernis was dismissed by Louis XV at that
time and Casanova’s enemies closed in on him. He sold the rest of
his belongings and acquired another mission to Holland to distance
himself from his troubles.

On the run

This time, however, his mission failed and he
fled to Cologne, then
Stuttgart
in the spring of 1760, where he lost the rest of his fortune. He
was yet again arrested for his debts, but managed to escape to
Switzerland.
Weary of his wanton life, Casanova visited the monastery of
Einsiedeln and considered the simple, scholarly life of a monk. He
returned to his hotel to think on the decision only to encounter a
new object of desire, and reverting to his old instincts, all
thoughts of a monk’s life were quickly forgotten. Moving on, he
visited Albrecht
von Haller and Voltaire, and
arrived in Marseille, then
Genoa,
Florence,
Rome, Naples, Modena, and Turin, moving from
one sexual romp to another.

In 1760, Casanova started styling himself the
Chevalier
de Seingalt, a name he would increasingly use for the rest of his
life. On occasion, he would also call himself Count de Farussi
(using his mother's maiden name) and when Pope
Clement XIII presented Casanova with the Papal
Order of the
Éperon d'Òr, he had an impressive cross and ribbon to display
on his chest.

Back in Paris, he set about one of his most
outrageous schemes—convincing his old dupe the Marquess d'Urfé that
he could turn her into a young man through occult means. The plan
did not yield Casanova the big payoff he had hoped for, and the
Marquess d'Urfé finally lost faith in him.

Casanova traveled to England in 1763, hoping to
sell his idea of a state lottery to English officials. He wrote of
the English, “the people have a special character, common to the
whole nation, which makes them think they are superior to everyone
else. It is a belief shared by all nations, each thinking itself
the best. And they are all right.” Through his connections, he
worked his way up to an audience with King George III, using most
of the valuables he had stolen from the Marquess d'Urfé. While
working the political angles, he also spent much time in the
bedroom, as was his habit. As a means to find females for his
pleasure, not being able to speak English, he put an advertisement
in the newspaper to let an apartment to the “right” person. He
interviewed many young women, choosing one “Mistress Pauline” who
suited him well. Soon, he established himself in her apartment and
seduced her. These and other liaisons, however, left him weak with
venereal disease and he left England broke and ill.

He went on to Belgium, recovered, and then for
the next three years, cross-crossed over Europe, covering about
4,500 miles by coach over rough roads, and going as far as Moscow (the average
daily coach trip being about 30 miles in a day). Again, his
principal goal was to sell his lottery scheme to other governments
and repeat the great success he had with the French government. But
a meeting with Frederick
the Great bore no fruit and in the surrounding German lands,
the same result. Not lacking either connections or confidence,
Casanova went to Russia and met with Catherine
the Great but she flatly turned down the lottery idea.

In 1766, he was expelled from Warsaw following a
pistol duel with Count Colonel
Franciszek Ksawery Branicki over an Italian actress, a lady
friend of theirs. Both were duelists were wounded, Casanova on the
left hand. The hand recovered on its own, after Casanova refused
the recommendation of doctors that it be amputated. Other stops
failed to gain any takers for the lottery. He returned to Paris for
several months in 1767 and hit the gambling salons, only to be
expelled from France by order of Louis XV himself, primarily for
Casanova’s scam involving the Marquess d'Urfé. Now known across
Europe for his reckless behavior, Casanova would have difficulty
overcoming his notoriety and gaining any fortune. So he headed for
Spain, where he was not as well known. He tried his usual approach,
leaning on well-placed contacts (often Freemasons), wining and
dining with nobles of influence, and finally arranging an audience
with the local monarch, in this case Charles III. But when no doors
opened for him, however, he could only roam across Spain, with
little to show for it. In Barcelona, he escaped an assassination
and landed in jail for six weeks. His Spanish adventure a failure,
he returned to France briefly, then to Italy.

Return to Venice

In Rome, Casanova had to prepare a way for
his return to Venice. While waiting for supporters to gain him
legal entry into Venice, Casanova began his modern Tuscan-Italian
translation of the Iliad, his History of
the Troubles in Poland, and a comic play. To ingratiate himself
with the Venetian authorities, Casanova did some commercial spying
for them. After months without a recall, however, he wrote a letter
of appeal directly to the Inquisitors. At last, he received his
long sought permission and burst into tears upon reading “We,
Inquisitors of State, for reasons known to us, give Giacomo
Casanova a free safe-conduct … empowering him to come, go, stop,
and return, hold communication wheresoever he pleases without let
or hindrance. So is our will.” Casanova was permitted to return to
Venice in September 1774 after eighteen years of exile.

At first, his return to Venice was a cordial one
and he was a celebrity. Even the Inquisitors wanted to hear how he
had escaped from their prison. Of his three bachelor patrons,
however, only Dandolo was still alive and Casanova was invited back
to live with him. He received a small stipend from Dandolo and
hoped to live from his writings, but that was not enough. He
reluctantly became a spy again for Venice, paid by piece work,
reporting on religion, morals, and commerce, most of it based on
gossip and rumor he picked up from social contacts. He was
disappointed. No financial opportunities of interest came about and
few doors opened for him in society as in the past.

At age 49, the years of reckless living and the
thousands of miles of travel had taken its toll. Casanova’s
smallpox scars, sunken checks, and hook nose became all the more
noticeable. His easy going manner now more guarded. Prince
Charles de Ligne, a friend (and uncle of his future employer),
described him around 1784:

He would be a good-looking man if he were not
ugly; he is tall and built like Hercules, but of an African tint;
eyes full of life and fire, but touchy, wary, rancorous—and this
gives him a ferocious air. It is easier to put him in a rage than
to make him gay. He laughs little, but makes other laugh. … He has
a manner of saying things which reminds me of Harlequin or
Figaro, and
which makes them sound witty.

Venice had changed for him. Casanova now had
little money for gambling, few willing females worth pursuing, and
few acquaintances to enliven his dull days. He heard of the death
of his mother and more paining, he went to the bedside of Bettina
Gozzi, who had first introduced him to sex, and she died in his
arms. His Iliad was published in three volumes, but to limited
subscribers and yielding little money. He got into a published
dispute with Voltaire over
religion. When he asked, “Suppose that you succeed in destroying
superstition. With what will you replace it?” Voltaire shot back,
“I like that. When I deliver humanity from a ferocious beast which
devours it, can I be asked what I shall put in its place.” From
Casanova’s point of view, if Voltaire had “been a proper
philosopher, he would have kept silent on that subject … the people
need to live in ignorance for the general peace of the
nation”.

In 1779, Casanova found Francesca, an uneducated
seamstress, who became his live-in lover and housekeeper, and who
loved him devotedly.Later that year, the Inquisitors put him on the
payroll and sent him to investigate commerce between the Papal
states and Venice. Other publishing and theater ventures failed,
primarily from lack of capital. In a downward spiral, Casanova was
expelled again from Venice in 1783, after writing a vicious satire
poking fun at Venetian nobility. In it he made his only public
statement that Grimani was his true father.

Forced to resume his travels again, Casanova
arrived in Paris, and in November 1783 met Benjamin
Franklin while attending a presentation on aeronautics and the
future of balloon transport. For a while, Casanova served as
secretary and pamphleteer to Sebastian Foscarini, Venetian
ambassador in Vienna. He also became acquainted with Lorenzo Da
Ponte, Mozart’s librettist,
who noted about Casanova, “This singular man never liked to be in
the wrong.” Notes by Casanova indicate that he may have made
suggestions to Da Ponte concerning the libretto for Mozart’s
Don
Giovanni.

Final years in Bohemia

In 1785, after Foscarini died,
Casanova began searching for another position. A few months later,
he became the librarian to Count Joseph Karl von Waldstein, a
chamberlain of the
emperor, in the Castle of
Dux, Bohemia (now
Duchcov
Castle, Czech
Republic). The Count—himself a Freemason, cabalist, and
frequent traveler—had taken to Casanova when he had met Casanova a
year earlier at Foscarini’s residence. Although the job offered
security and good pay, Casanova’s describes his last years as
boring and frustrating, even though it was the most productive time
for writing. His health had deteriorated dramatically and he found
life among peasants to be less than stimulating. He was only able
to make occasional visits to Vienna and Dresden for relief.
Although Casanova got on well with the Count, his employer was a
much younger man with his own eccentricities. The Count often
ignored him at meals and failed to introduce him to important
visiting guests. More over Casanova, the testy outsider, was
thoroughly disliked by most of the other inhabitants of the Castle
of Dux. Casanova’s only friends seemed to be his fox terriers. In
despair, Casanova considered suicide, but instead decided that he
must live on to record his memoirs, which he did until his
death.

In 1797, word arrived that the Republic
of Venice had ceased to exist and Napoleon
Bonaparte had seized Casanova’s home city. It was too late to
return home. Casanova died on June 4, 1798 at age 73. His
last words are said to have been “I have lived as a philosopher and
I die as a Christian”.

The memoirs

The isolation and boredom of Casanova’s last
years enabled him to focus without distractions on his Histoire de
ma vie, without which his fame would have been considerably
diminished, if not blotted out entirely. He began to think about
writing his memoirs around 1780 and began in earnest by 1789, as
“the only remedy to keep from going mad or dying of grief”. The
first draft was completed by July 1792, and he spent the next six
years revising it. He puts a happy face on his days of loneliness,
writing in his work, “I can find no pleasanter pastime than to
converse with myself about my own affairs and to provide a most
worthy subject for laughter to my well-bred audience.”His
recollections only go up to the summer of 1774. His memoirs were
still being compiled at the time of his death. A letter by him in
1792 states that he was reconsidering his decision to publish them
believing his story was despicable and he would make enemies by
writing the truth about his affairs. But he decided to proceed and
to use initials instead of actual names, and to tone down its
strongest passages. He wrote in French instead of Italian because
“the French language is more widely known than mine”.

The memoirs open with:

I begin by declaring to my reader that, by
everything good or bad that I have done throughout my life, I am
sure that I have earned merit or incurred guilt, and that hence I
must consider myself a free agent…Despite an excellent moral
foundation, the inevitable fruit of the divine principles which
were rooted in my heart, I was all my life the victim of my senses;
I have delighted in going astray and I have constantly lived in
error … my follies are the follies of youth. You will see that I
laugh at them, and if you are kind you will laugh at them with me.
You will laugh when you discover that I often had no scruples about
deceiving nitwits and scoundrels and fools when I found it
necessary. As for women, this sort of reciprocal deceit cancels
itself out, for when love enters in, both parties are usually
dupes.

Casanova is clear about the purpose of his
book:

I expect the friendship, the esteem, and the
gratitude of my readers. Their gratitude, if reading my memoirs
will have given instruction and pleasure. Their esteem if, doing me
justice, they will have found that I have more virtues than faults;
and their friendship as soon as they come to find me deserving of
it by the frankness and good faith with which I submit myself to
their judgment without in any way disguising what I am.

He also advises his readers that they “will not
find all my adventures. I have left out those which would have
offended the people who played a part in them, for they would cut a
sorry figure in them. Even so, there are those who will sometimes
think me too indiscreet; I am sorry for it.” And in the final
words, Casanova hints at adventures unrecorded: “The next morning
at the appointed hour I see her in the carriage. I pay her a brief
compliment; I sit down beside her, and we set off.”

Uncut, the memoirs ran to twelve volumes, and the
standard editions to nearly 1200 pages. Though his chronology is at
times confusing and inaccurate, and many of his tales exaggerated,
much of his narrative and many details are corroborated by
contemporary writings. He has a good ear for dialogue and writes at
length about all classes of society. Casanova, for the most part,
is honest about his faults, intentions, and motivations, and shares
his successes and failures with good humor. The confession is
largely devoid of repentance or remorse. He celebrates the senses
with his readers, especially regarding music, food, and women. “I
have always liked highly seasoned food. … As for women, I have
always found that the one I was in love with smelled good, and the
more copious her sweat the sweeter I found it.” He mentions over
120 adventures with women and girls, with several veiled references
to male lovers as well. He describes his duels and conflicts with
scoundrels and officials, his entrapments and his escapes, his
schemes and plots, his anguish and his sighs of pleasure. He
demonstrates convincingly, “I can say vixi (‘I have lived’).”

The manuscript of Casanova’s memoirs was held by
his relatives until it was sold to F. A. Brockhaus publishers, and
first published in heavily abridged versions in German around 1822,
then in French. During World War II, the manuscript survived the
allied bombing of Leipzig. The memoirs were heavily pirated through
the ages and have been translated into some twenty languages. But
not until 1960 was the entire text published in its original
language of French.

The art of seduction

For Casanova, as well as his fellow
sybarites of the upper
class, love and sex were more casual and less endowed with the
seriousness later bestowed by the Romantic
movement during the 19th century. Flirtations, bedroom games,
and short-term liaisons were common among nobles who married for
social connections rather than love. For Casanova, it was an open
field of sexual opportunities (and, alas, disease.)

Although multi-faceted and complex, Casanova
personality was dominated by his sensual urges: “Cultivating
whatever gave pleasure to my senses was always the chief business
of my life; I never found any occupation more important. Feeling
that I was born for the sex opposite of mine, I have always loved
it and done all that I could to make myself loved by it.”

Casanova’s ideal liaison had elements beyond sex,
including complicated plots, heroes and villains, and gallant
outcomes. In a pattern he often repeated, he would discover an
attractive woman in trouble with a brutish or jealous lover (Act
I); he would ameliorate her difficulty (Act II); she would show her
gratitude; he would seduce her; a short exciting affair would ensue
(Act III); feeling a lose of ardor or boredom setting in, he would
plead his unworthiness and arrange for her marriage or pairing with
a worthy man, then exit the scene (Act IV).

He advises, “there is no honest woman with an
uncorrupted heart whom a man is not sure of conquering by dint of
gratitude. It is one of the surest and shortest means.” Alcohol and
violence, for him, were not proper tools of seduction. Instead,
attentiveness and small favors should be employed to soften a
woman’s heart, but “a man who makes known his love by words is a
fool”. Verbal communication is essential; “without speech, the
pleasure of love is diminished by at least two-thirds”, but words
of love must be implied not boldly proclaimed.

Mutual consent is important, according to
Casanova, but he avoided easy conquests or overly difficult
situations as not suitable for this purposes. He strove to be the
ideal escort in the first act—witty, charming, confidential,
helpful—before moving into the bedroom in the third act. Casanova
claims not to be predatory (“my guiding principle has been never to
direct my attack against novices or those whose prejudices were
likely to prove an obstacle”); however, his conquests did tend to
be insecure or emotionally exposed women.

Casanova valued intelligence in a woman: “After
all, a beautiful woman without a mind of her own leaves her lover
with no resource after he had physically enjoyed her charms.” His
attitude towards educated women, however, is sexist and typical for
his time: “In a woman learning is out of place; it compromises the
essential qualities of her sex … no scientific discoveries have
been made by women … (which) requires a vigor which the female sex
cannot have. But in simple reasoning and in delicacy of feeling we
must yield to women.”

Casanova and gambling

As he recorded, gambling played a
large role in the high society that Casanova traveled in. It helped
gain him women to seduce and men to scheme with and against. In his
memoirs, he discusses many forms of 18th century gambling—including
lotteries, faro, basset, piquet, biribi, primero, quinze, and
whist—and the passion for it among the nobility and the high
clergy. Cheaters (known as “correctors of fortune”) were somewhat
more tolerated then than today in the casinos, and seldom caused
affront. Most gamblers were on guard against cheaters and their
tricks. Scams of all sorts were also common, and Casanova delighted
in them.

Throughout his life, Casanova would gamble for
recreation and as an occasional means of living, winning and losing
large sums. He was tutored by professionals, and he was “instructed
in those wise maxims without which games of chance ruin those who
participate in them”. He was not above occasionally cheating. At
times, he even teamed up with professionals. Casanova claims that
he was “relaxed and smiling when I lost, and I won without
covetousness”. However, when outrageously duped himself, he could
act violently, sometimes calling for a duel. Casanova admits that
he was not disciplined enough to be a professional gambler: “I had
neither prudence enough to leave off when fortune was adverse, nor
sufficient control over myself when I had won.” Nor did he like
being considered to a professional gambler: “Nothing could ever be
adduced by professional gamblers that I was of their infernal
clique.” For Casanova, gambling was primarily a means for flirting,
making connections, acting gallantly, and proving himself a
gentlemen among his social superiors.

Casanova's fame and influence

Although best known for his
prowess in seduction for more than two hundred years since his
death, Casanova was also recognized by his contemporaries as an
extraordinary person, a man of far-ranging intellect and curiosity.
Casanova was one of the foremost chroniclers of his age. He was a
true adventurer, traveling across Europe from end-to-end in search
of fortune, seeking out the most prominent people of his time to
help his cause. He was a man of contradictory traits—generous and
mean, honest and deceptive, fawning and aloof, skeptical and
gullible, superstitious and rational. He was a servant of the
establishment and equally decadent as his times, but also a
participant in secret societies and a seeker of answers beyond the
conventional. He was religious, a devout Catholic, and believed in
prayer: “Despair kills, prayer dissipates it; and after man trusts
and acts.” But he also believed in free will and reason and clearly
did not subscribe to the notion that pleasure-seeking would keep
him from heaven, if heaven did indeed exist.

He was, by vocation and avocation, a lawyer,
clergyman, military officer, violinist, con man, pimp, gourmand,
dancer, businessman, diplomat, spy, politician, mathematician,
social philosopher, cabalist, playwright, and writer. He wrote over
twenty works, including plays and essays, and many letters. His
novel Icosameron is an early work of science fiction.

Born of actors, he had a passion for the theater
and for an improvised, theatrical life. But with all his talents,
he frequently succumbed to the quest for pleasure and sex, often
avoiding sustained work and established plans, and got himself into
trouble when prudent action would have served him better. His true
occupation was living largely on his quick wits, steely nerves,
luck, social charm, and the money given to him in gratitude and by
trickery.

Prince
Charles de Ligne, who understood Casanova well, and who knew
most of the prominent individuals of the age, thought Casanova the
most interesting man he had ever met: “there is nothing in the
world of which he is not capable.” Rounding out the portrait, the
Prince also stated:

The only things about which he knows nothing are
those which he believes himself to be expert: the rules of the
dance, the French language, good taste, the way of the world,
savoir vivre. It is only his comedies which are not funny, only his
philosophical works which lack philosophy—all the rest are filled
with it; there is always something weighty, new, piquant, profound.
He is a well of knowledge, but he quotes Homer and Horace ad
nauseam. His wit and his sallies are like Attic salt. He is
sensitive and generous, but displease him in the slightest and he
is unpleasant, vindictive, and detestable. He believes in nothing
except what is most incredible, being superstitious about
everything. He loves and lusts after everything. … He is proud
because he is nothing. … Never tell him you have heard the story he
is going to tell you. … Never omit to greet him in passing, for the
merest trifle will make him your enemy.

“Casanova”, like “Don Juan”, is a long
established term in the English language. According to Merriam
Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 11th ed., the noun Casanova means
“Lover; esp: a man who is a promiscuous and unscrupulous lover”.
Its first usage in written English was around 1852. References in
culture to Casanova are numerous—in books, films, theater, and
music.

An abductor and killer of young women who calls himself
'Casanova' appears the 1997 feature film Kiss
the Girls, based on the book by James
Patterson.

In an episode of Relic
Hunter, Sydney and Nigel search for a book which apparently
contains the secrets of Casanova's sexual charm.

In an episode of That '70s
Show, after Eric Forman
is caught masturbating in a bathroom, his father remarks, "Well, if
it isn't Casanova- the man who seduced himself.

In the webcomic KISS 4K, the spirit of the Starchild enhabits
the body of Giacomo Casanova until he dies. It gives him the power
of empathy, bending people to his will, which supplies an
explanation of his many sexual conquests.